Use gamification with students for maximum impact
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Gamification – the application of game mechanics and design elements to typically less playful tasks for more effective user engagement – is not a new concept in the education and learning sector. The principles of games have been used for years. Even in the latter half of the 20th century, educational games were being used to complement more traditional learning methods to help students, and when you think about how schools are set up, a lot of gaming elements are already present.
First, children get stars and badges to reward academic achievements and high performance, then grading systems come into play. These are akin to points in a game. Progress is represented by moving up a year or grade, or mastery of a topic is represented by moving into a more advanced set. These are comparable to levels in a game. However, this falls short of true gamification, and represents some of the complexities involved in trying to gamify something like education. Just because some features or mechanics of games are present, doesn’t mean you will achieve user engagement. For gamification to be impactful on students and learners, it must be designed thoughtfully, to tap into their intrinsic motivations, like their competitiveness and desires for challenge and discovery.
The advancement and accessibility of powerful mobile and internet technologies means modern educational games can borrow mechanics and design elements from popular video games, creating unique digital tools that are far more engaging for learners than traditional educational resources. They work on all modern devices, be that mobile smartphones, tablets, or home computers, so you have something that can engage students in the classroom as easily as it can make for more fun homework. By mimicking video games, you also have a digital asset that mimics the shorter feedback cycles of the kind of media today’s school kids and students are more receptive to.
Learner engagement is important for long term individual development
Engaging the student in their learning to improve motivation is a priority for nearly every institution of education or training. When a student is truly engaged in their learning, they are far more likely to be receptive to the acquisition of skills and new knowledge, and a side effect of this is that it could help them develop their interpersonal skills when working collaboratively with other students.
Increased individual commitment and motivation will stay with a student throughout their life, and contribute to their personal development, as well as to their future integration at school or university, and later in their professional lives. However, involving pupils and students in their learning is not always an easy task.
Students can be quickly and easily demotivated during their studies, especially when it comes to challenging subjects, or a distance learning course. The objective for the teaching staff is to generate interest and passion from the student, and to help them find the desire to learn and develop their knowledge and skills through study. This can be acquired by personalising and adapting training and activities to make subject matter more stimulating. Gamification techniques, such as applying storytelling mechanics, and interactive elements which can appeal to the student’s desire for competition and discovery, will be the most effective digital approach in nearly all cases.
Motivate and engage students with gamification for maximum impact
Gamification, taking so many cues from video games, is particularly suitable for virtual learning environments. By offering interactive content, challenges and activities that use video game mechanics, we can make the student an actor in their learning, both in class and online. The goal is to give them the feeling that they’re not being imposed on, but rather that they’re controlling part of their learning. This autonomy can increase student commitment and their motivation to learn during their education.
Another big advantage of online educational games is that it’s a low stress, labour-efficient way to constantly monitor how students are interacting with learning materials, rather than, say, a single large test at the end of a term highlighting a major gap in understanding. Teachers can use any games created on the Drimify games creation platform to measure and informally assess student performance in order to support and guide the learner through their studies. In addition to seeing how students are performing on Quizzes, they can also see larger trends through their dashboard, such as engagement rate and participation rate, to easily assess if there’s a user experience (UX) issue in their educational game.
Using game mechanics like leaderboards, points systems, and rewards like badges can encourage participation in activities both in classrooms and online courses. Incorporating these elements of gamification helps generate positive outcomes in students, such as increased attention and motivation and the development of new skills. For example, using the Dynamic Path™ format, you can create and set up a series of customised Quizzes, interspersed with video, audio and text, to help students learn through a kind of interactive story where they play a principal character.
Among the characteristics of a successful educational gaming experience, there’s the inbuilt possibility for the student to start over and improve, which also allows for self-evaluation through their learning journey. With modern educational gamification experiences, each student can progress through the game at their own pace: for example, a student who needs several attempts to achieve success can start over without fear of negative judgement from peers and teachers, while a student who passes after only two tries will not feel frustrated having to wait for their classmates. This characteristic of a gamified learning environment allows pupils and students to be more engaged and motivated to complete the activities and progress with their learning.
Effectively and sustainably engage students
Gamifying the classroom, the lessons, and a larger learning path helps to create commitment and motivation among students, leading them towards effective and productive participation, and better academic performance. These are all elements that we seek to develop to better prepare students for the world of work and professional life.
Effectively designed gamification experiences instituted year-round also allow teaching staff to better support their students, as they will constantly be able to check in on how students are performing, and be able to tweak and improve the gamified content based on data gathered in their dashboard. This less labour intensive digital learning tool gives teachers more time to better plan lessons, and focus their energies on students who may need slightly more attention to avoid them falling behind. As artificial intelligence (AI) improves, and becomes more accessible, this will make game creation and improvement even easier, and gamified learning experiences will almost become highly efficient teaching assistants.
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